According to tracking firm OTX in a talk with Gamasutra, dropping the Call of Duty name from the upcoming Modern Warfare 2 may hurt the game.

The firm says that the game has lost brand recognition through the name change.

Here is an interesting section taken directly from Gamasutra:

“Up until the beginning of May, OTX had been tracking the title as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. More specifically, we asked a representative group of gamers in the U.S. whether or not they had heard of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. At that time, approximately 40 percent of all gamers in the U.S. claimed that they had heard of this title.”

He continued, “However, once it became clear that Activision was positioning the title as Modern Warfare 2, OTX removed ‘Call of Duty‘ from the consumer survey, and the awareness levels dropped to 20 percent. In other words, the Call of Duty brand association essentially doubles the awareness for the game. That is quite a remarkable statistic.”